Responsive Emails – Adapting to Your Mobile Audience

March 18, 2015

by CJ Wolfe

Once upon a time, email was predominately a desktop experience. With mobile devices becoming the standard choice for retrieving online information, it would be wise to assume that traditional email will also evolve.

So where does email fit into the ever-growing portable online presence? Consider these eye-opening statistics:

48% of total email opens occurred on a mobile phone or tablet in Q2 2014 (Experian’s Quarterly Email Benchmarking Report)

Mobile email opens have grown by 180% in three years (Campaign Monitor, Email Interaction Across Mobile and Desktop (Q1 2014)

Checking email has become a key part of mobile device users’ daily routine. In fact, 91% of consumers check their email at least once per day on their smartphones, making it the most used functionality (ExactTarget Mobile Behavior Report, 2014).

As email tools and applications continue adapting to our existing online universe, the types of content they can interpret and decipher is always expanding. One method that has caught traction in the past few years when it comes to company email marketing is the implementation of responsive emails.

What’s a Responsive Email?

Like responsive websites, responsive emails adapt to the devices that they are viewed on – with the goal of providing users with a less cluttered and more ideal online experience.

Attributes of a responsive email include:

Layouts that can change from multi-column to single-column on the fly

Font sizes that change depending on the size of the screen

Elements that can be hidden or shown depending on the platform on which the email is viewed (image-based buttons, for example)

Bigger buttons that are farther apart, making larger “tap targets”

With recent statistics, it’s safe to conclude that incorporating the usage of responsive emails is no longer optional. Many email marketers state that they are using responsive design in company materials to meet their clients growing mobile needs.

Is it time you started using responsive emails to communicate with your growing mobile audience?